Draft 2 PhD Introduction - ResearchSpace@Auckland

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critical response to the film in New Zealand was mixed did not unduly worry him. “I
wasn’t fussed if not many people saw it. I thought it had a value that had nothing to do
with me”. 576 His assessment of the film has certainly been borne out within its
immediate area. Carter notes, in reference to an annual film festival held in the Urewera
district, that In Spring is still the film “that all the old people in the area really want to
see. So in a sense, it has struck that chord, every year, that’s the film they want to look
at”. 577
Summary
In conclusion, it is clear that Ward brought his highly individual approach to
documentary, as he had done to drama, not only in terms of theme (a woman on the
periphery of society) but in terms of style (the primacy of the image). Because such a
style requires the viewer to read between the lines, there are clearly opportunities for
unsympathetic critics to claim they see signs of racism or other unpleasant forms of
ideology or myth lurking in the cracks. Ultimately Ward is a Romantic filmmaker, but
his form of Romanticism is highly sophisticated – in documentary as in drama – and
any valid critique must do justice to his painstaking, complex approach. One way to
understand the debate around his film is to see it as based upon different conceptions of
reality (or in this case, Maori reality). Arguably, certain aspects of Ward’s world-view
lined up in a powerful way with those of Puhi or the Tuhoe, particularly in terms of
aroha and the spiritual dimension. Obviously other views of Puhi and Niki would have
been possible – no single documentary can exhaust its topic, only claim at best to have
caught an important dimension of it.
Ward’s auteurist approach (already emerging clearly from his two major student films)
reflects both a particular view of the world (his Romantic concerns with extreme
subjectivity, with outsiders, and with an expanded sense of the real that incorporates
forms of spirituality) and a particular sense of style (close up details, heightened
awareness of light and colour, long-held shots that gradually reveal) – that is, a style
based upon nuance and suggestion rather than explicit statement. The similarities
between In Spring and A State of Siege – despite their very different genres –give
credence to Renoir’s notion that an auteur only makes one film in his career.
576 Ward quoted in Martin, "In Spring One Plants Alone: A Matter of Seeing It," 12.
577 Lynette Read, interview with Alison Carter, 6 August 2002.